Projections Part 2 - STCM Map

This week was a bear! Like everyone else, I had a terrible time with the amount of the material and the written (19 pages) instructions. It was only after speaking with Amber, course instructor, and taking a break from the whole situation that I was able to get back to it today and produce something as depicted by my map below. I was not able to get the roads and county boundaries to show but I ran out of time and wanted to get something posted. Not my best work but then again this lab was only one part of what was required this week. In addition to all this frustration, we also had to work in a group to produce an online map, write the process up and post to a gallery on ArcGIS Online. This was by far more fun!

This map was a result of searching for and downloading data such as quads, aerials, shapefiles and tabular xy data from two online sources: FGDL and LABINS.org. It represents two quad sheets, Pace and Cantonement within Escambia County, FL wherein a number of Petroleum Storage Tank Contamination Monitoring Sites are located. I am hoping that over time and with practice this material will not be such a mystery to me and I can produce quality work.

Projections Part I

In this 5th week, we were taught about what Map Projections are and why they are important when considering your maps. We learned about the various Coordinate Systems and Georeferencing in Chapter 2 of the text. There was a dizzying amount of information and we are told that it is normal to feel a bit overwhelmed by all this material. It is apparently only after many years working with it will we feel perfectly comfortable. If this is so, then I am right on track. It did feel overwhelming at times but with perseverance and sheer determination, I was able to construct the map below depicting 3 dataframes with 3 projected layers. Each map shows a specific map projection and indicates how these varying coordinate system,s by necessity, will show slight variations as indicated by the differences in square miles for 4 selected Florida counties.

ArcGIS Online and Map Packages

This week showed us how to utilize the ArcGIS Online system for creating and sharing maps. The outcome was the creation of 2 maps that we shared in this online forum. The first exercise dealt with using and modifying map and tile packages as depicted in the first illustration below while the second screenshot shows the outcome from optimizing a map package.

The last screenshot shows how newly shared maps appear in the ArcGIS Online My Content section after registering as a user. I can easily see how working in partnerships this capability could be very useful. I work for a federal agency and not everyone always has the same access or programs. This will allow sharing of data much more easily.